The charge of censorship derives from one of the four “decommunization” laws that Ukraine’s parliament adopted in mid-2015. It states that insulting the organizations, groups, parties, and movements deemed “fighters for independence” is illegal, but it fails to specify what the legal mechanisms for dealing with such views might be. It’s clear to me and most Ukrainians that the injunction, legally daft as it is, is exclusively exhortative. In any case, Viatrovych’s institute didn’t write that law; the son of one of the commanders of the Ukrainian nationalist underground did. [...]
Especially striking is the way in which these critics implicitly equate Ukrainian national identity, in even its most innocent forms, with a potentially virulent fascism. The historian Stephen Cohen provides a plethora of examples, having fully agreed with the Putin regime’s characterization of the demonstrators during the 2013–14 Euromaidan protests and the post-Yanukovych government as fascist. To be sure, the organized nationalist movement of the interwar period was not democratic. Some Banderites flirted with fascism; others were true believers. But the vast majority were indifferent to questions of regime type and instead were willing to sacrifice their lives for the one tenet that all Ukrainian nationalists, and indeed all nationalists, have in common: the liberation of the nation and the construction of a national state. [...]
By the same token, it is important to remember that Ukrainian nationalists are not just cutthroats and murderers; they are not just victimizers. They are also victims. And most important, although most banal, they are human beings who deserve to have a voice like any other people. Like all marginalized people, the Ukrainians should be able to participate in the writing of their own history. A fully open and frank discussion of all of Ukraine’s history thus requires that the grand narratives that have stifled freedom of expression in the past be reduced to mere points of view that must compete in the marketplace of ideas.
No comments:
Post a Comment